Date: Fri, 17 Jan 1997 11:28:40 +0100 (MET)
From: malecki-AT-algonet.se (Robert Malecki)
Subject: M-G: Black English Revisited


Thought I would send Mumia Jamal's stuff on Ebonics. I think it a clear and 
principled stand that many on the lists appear to be trying to duck. I fully 
support this principled statement and think that others should rethink their 
at best hedging if not out right hostility to Ebonics.

Bob Malecki

)From: Susan1218-AT-aol.com
)Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 11:25:01 -0500 (EST)
)Subject:  Mumia Abu-Jamal Article  Mother Tongue: Black English Revisited
)
)                             #312 - Written 8 January 1997
)             Mother Tongue: Black English Revisited
)                              copyright 1997 by Mumia Abu-Jamal
)     "Every generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover
)     its mission, fulfill it, or betray it."
)                           -- Frantz Fanon,
)                               _The Wretched of the Earth_(1963)
)
)     Across the United States, controversy rages over the
)decision of the Oakland School Board to recognize Black English
)as a distinct language form, and to train its teachers in its
)structure and usage.
)     In an age of white allowance of umbrage occasioned by the
)O.J. [criminal] trial, Oakland's School Board was savaged in ways
)that were eerily similar to the insults leveled at the Black
)jurors who acquitted Simpson.  California's Gov. Pete Wilson's
)press spokesman deemed it a "ridiculous theory."  U.S. Education
)Secretary Richard Riley termed Black English a mere "dialect,"
)advising against "elevating Black English to the status of a
)language."  A _Newsweek_ Black columnist hit the School Board for
)its "stale, silly rhetoric." _Time_ called it "goofy."
)     Predictably, much of the controversy, energized by the smug
)assurance that the Oakland School Board didn't know what it was
)talking about, was as passionate as it was uninformed, with the
)lamentable result that Black middle-class figures attacked other
)Black middle-class figures who sought to accurately address what
)is often a Black lower-class and Black working-class reality--the
)structure and usage of language, that is markedly distinct from
)what we like to call standard English--and English radically
)different from the English of England.
)     If the white majoritarian media was more concerned with
)informing people than stirring up controversy, the slant,
)research and presentation of the story would have been far
)different (but then, of course, not as many papers would've been
)sold).  Readers would've learned, for example;
)     1)  "Black English" (also know as Ebonics, Black speech,
)Black language) found to be a legitimate language in a federal
)court case in _1977_!
)     2)  In the case, _Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School
)Children v. Ann Arbor School District Board_, the court ruled Ann
)Arbor must "take into account" Black English in the educational
)process;
)     3)  The court ordered the school district to give special
)training and orientation to teachers in Black English and its
)educational implications;
)In other words, this _was_ "news"--20 years ago!  It's old news
)now, recycled as fodder for cheap controversy.
)     Dr. Geneva Smitherman, Ph.D., a professor and then-director
)of the African American Language and Literacy Program, Dept. of
)English, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan was
)the chief expert witness in the _King_ case, and wrote a number
)of books and studies on the subject.  None of her voluminous
)works are cited nor referred to in any of the national reports
)slanted against the very idea of Black English.
)     Dr. Smitherman tells us that, ". . . the question of Black
)English clearly reflects the interaction of _race and class_."
)     What determines what is a language or a dialect?  She cites
)the words of linguist Max Weinreich: "The difference between a
)language and a dialect is who's got the army."
)     Thus, the question becomes a political one, one of power;
)for only a truly free people can determine their language, and an
)army of white politicians, who usually stand in silence when the
)deplorable conditions of Black, urban schools are noted, launched
)an attack on Oakland's Black educators, allied by a well-meaning,
)but ill-informed Black bourgeoisie, and a media that delights in
)Black condemnation.
)     Is this mere rhetoric?
)     Then consider the horrors revealed in Jonathan Kozol's
)_Savage Inequalities_, where children had to navigate rivers of
)human waste in their hallways, windows open to raging wind, books
)of several past generations crumbling and rotting in student
)hands, and more.  Where was the outrage?  Where was the outcry?
)      _Where were the headlines?_
)     When one considers the political and media silence and
)inactivity that ignored Kozol with the vast umbrage that greeted
)the Oakland School Board, it is clear that the central issue is
)not the children, but money.  Why did all government officials
)rush to assure white voters that Oakland wouldn't be eligible for
)funds?  Money.
)     They don't give a damn about the children, in Oakland,
)Brooklyn, Overtown, Roxbury, or anywhere else Black, Spanish poor
)children live.
)     It's not a question of language--but of power.
)     How can so many white (and Black bourgeois) politicians get
)all amped over Black English, and yet remain silent at the
)spectacle of schools in poor communities crumbling, while schools
)in wealthy communities sprout like college campuses?
)     The Oakland School District should be applauded for their
)courage and insight, and for meeting the children where they are
)without stigmatizing them with the national presumption that they
)are stupid because of the way they utilize language.
)     Black English, for millions of us in the inner cities, and
)in the projects, is not street language--but home language, where
)we communicate our deepest feelings, fears, views and insights.
)     We needn't be damned for using it, by anyone--especially so-called
)teachers.





     --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---